Thursday, 1 September 2011

I have recently accquired a couple of boxes of 4x5 sheet film made by Ilford and thought it would fun to try since it's well over expired. The label on the box states the "test date" as december the 5th 1961 and "factory issue" as january the 1st 1962.

The results are really impressive for a near 50 years old expired film... the emulsion is not faded at all and there are no signs of fog or deterioration, the boxes were vacuum sealed when arrived and I believe it helped to keep them in great condition, added to the fact that is a high quality emulsion, the tests below are from the FP3 125 ISO box.

To process the negatives I followed the FP4 instructions, pre-soaked for a couple of minutes and then added Rodinal 1:100 solution. The developing time was increased from 20 to 28 minutes, inverting the tank continuously for the first minute and then one very gently inversion every 30 seconds.

The images were scanned at 1200 dpi and I only adjusted levels and curves, no sharpening or cleaning tool were used at this estage. I enhanced some details so they can be better seen, normally you get to see the grains especially on the sky area but on these ones they're almost unnoticed!